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Vegan lunches can -- and should -- be a lot more interesting than bare salads or carrot sticks and hummus. New Veganism columnist Gena Hamshaw will be sharing inspiration for midday meals that stave off both hunger and boredom.

Today: If you're a student -- or just a busy person -- you'll want some fall dinners that double as next-day lunches. Here are Gena's favorites.

In 2010, I decided to go back to school for a degree in healthcare. I thought it would take me a year or two. Nearly five years and fourteen classes later, I’m still a student, still working my way through a parade of prerequisites, and still devouring a steady rotation of tasty, dependable, and portable student meals.

Packing lunches and dinners has become second nature at this point, but every autumn presents me with a new excuse to get excited about back-to-school meals. The meals that tend to work best for me fall into two major categories: 1) dinners that make for awesome leftovers, and 2) sturdy salads (those that are just as tasty on the second day, or that keep their crunch after a long morning in my backpack).

Here are some of the dishes I’m most eager to rediscover this fall, as I hunker down for a new semester. They include tempeh kabobs that fit perfectly in a lunchbox, veggie burgers that you can pack alongside fresh vegetables and a hearty, sprouted grain bun, pizza that’s even better cold, and two salads that actually do stay fresh overnight. I pack up these meals with an assortment of reliable snacks: hummus, trail mix, fresh fruit, and some no-bake snack bars, of course.

Gena's new book Choosing Raw: Making Raw Foods Part of the Way You Eat is a thorough, relatable guide to incorporating raw and vegan foods into any diet. It's full of no-fuss recipes for every meal, ranging from fully raw to mostly cooked, plus plenty of snacks and desserts to keep everyone happy.